Reinventing Discovery_ The New Era of Networked Science - Michael Nielsen [91]
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By sending this anagram, Galileo avoided revealing the details of his discovery, but at the same time ensured that if someone else—such as Kepler—later made the same discovery, Galileo could reveal the anagram and claim the credit. This bought him time in which he alone could build upon the discovery. At the same time Galileo also wrote to his patrons, the Medici. But in that letter, eager to keep his patrons happy, Galileo disclosed the full details of his discovery, asking the Medici to keep it secret for the time being. This state of affairs lasted a little over three months, until at the request of Kepler’s patron, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II, Galileo relented and revealed that the anagram was the Latin “Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi,” meaning, roughly, that he had observed the highest of the planets (Saturn) to be three-formed.
There is an amusing coda to this story. After Galileo’s discovery of the four moons of Jupiter, Kepler developed a theory that Mars must have two moons, on the grounds that Earth had one moon, Jupiter had four, and Mars was the planet between Earth and Jupiter. When Kepler received Galileo’s anagram about Saturn he worked hard to decipher it, and finally decoded it as “Salve umbistineum geminatum Martia proles,” meaning, roughly, “Be greeted, double knob, children of Mars.” Aha, thought Kepler, Galileo must have seen the two moons of Mars! Kepler wasn’t sure, though, because one letter in Galileo’s anagram went unused. Alas for Kepler, the discovery of the two moons of Mars had to wait until 1877, when far more powerful telescopes were available.
The First Open Science Revolution
Galileo wasn’t the only great scientist of the age to use anagrams to announce discoveries. Newton, Huygens, and Hooke all used anagrams or ciphers for similar purposes. In fact, many scientists of the time were reluctant to publicize their discoveries in any way at all. The infamous Newton-Leibniz controversy over who invented calculus occurred in part because Newton claimed to have invented calculus in the 1660s and 1670s, but didn’t publish a full account of his discoveries until 1693. In the meantime, Leibniz developed and published his own version the calculus. Imagine modern biology if publication of the base pairs in the human genome had been delayed by 30 years, or if the base pairs had been announced as an anagram (“AACCGGGT . . . ,” say, instead of “CGTCAAGG . . .”)?
Why were Galileo, Newton, and other early scientists so secretive? In fact, a secretive culture of discovery was a natural response to the conditions of the time. There was often little personal gain for scientists in sharing discoveries, and much to lose. Early in his career, Galileo made the mistake of showing a military compass he had invented to a young man named Baldassare Capra. Baldassare later claimed the discovery as his own, and accused Galileo of plagiarism. It took Galileo years of effort and considerable expense to regain the credit for his discovery, not to mention his reputation. No wonder he was so secretive in the matter of Saturn being “three-formed.”
Such secretive behavior looks peculiar to our modern eyes. Today, when scientists make a discovery, they share their results as rapidly and as widely as possible, by publishing those results in a scientific journal. For really significant breakthroughs, the scientists involved may write a paper and submit it to a journal in a matter of days. Some scientific journals offer expedited publication services for major papers, promising to publish them within a few weeks after submission. Of course, the reason today’s scientists are